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Casks and pails are created at the Ludwell-Paradise Stable on Nicholson Street.

Barrels of all sizes stand ready to meet storage needs.

Cooper

Ancient trade

The art of coopering dates back centuries, and the basic trade
has remained unchanged. Coopering requires skill, intelligence,
and strength. The tools of the trade are often handed down for generations.

Coopers crafted casks which:

Held flour, gunpowder, tobacco, and other commodities

Served as shipping containers

Stored liquids from wine to milk

Many colonial coopers worked on plantations to produce the many
hogsheads needed to ship tobacco from Virginia to Great Britain.
Other coopers worked in towns like Williamsburg, turning staves
and hoops into everything from butter churns to tubs. Large plantations
often trained slaves in the trade. Coopers could also be found on
military and merchant vessels, since casks were common aboard ships.

Finest casks held liquid

Today, coopers are often called "barrel makers," but
a barrel is only one kind of cask, one made by what was known as
a "tight cooper." Other casks included the firkin, kilderkin,
hogshead, butt, rundlet, tierce, puncheon, and pipe. The tight cooper
assembled clear white oak staves split from the dense center of
a tree. He fit the staves one to another, and bound them with iron
to make casks for liquids of all sorts.

A "slack cooper" built containers for such commodities
as flour and tobacco. "White" coopering produced pails,
churns, tubs, and dippers, often made of cedar or pine.

Casks, barrels, buckets, and pails found throughout
Williamsburg

The coopers in The Revolutionary City shape their staves with broadaxes, planes, and drawknives,
and then gather them in a circle secured by a ring. The gathered
staves are heated over a small stove or cresset to make them pliant
and the heated staves are then bent into shape. Hickory hoops hold
them for banding. The trickiest step is cutting grooves inside the
lips to fit the barrelheads tightly. Today, the results of the
coopers' work can be seen throughout The Revolutionary City.